* * *
“EILEEN, WHAT’S YOUR LAST NAME?”
She glanced up from the typewriter. “Why?”
“I’m labelling pay packs.”
She shrugged. “You pay in cash and I’m the only Eileen here.”
Holden squinted at her. Good gracious, she was difficult. “Eileen, I like consistency. Just tell me your surname.”
“It’s the eighties; pop culture has paved the way for strong, independent women to be recognized by only one name. It’s Eileen…like Cher or Madonna.”
Holden could feel his pressure rising; Eileen couldn’t type and she’d drive him to drink. What a great boss I am, he thought irritably as he scratched her name on the envelope and tossed it on her desk.
He was just about to head into the back to close up for the weekend when the bell on the door tinkled and Hugh Derricks walked in. The police commissioner greeted everyone and asked, “Is Clifford here?”
“Check the viewing room.”
“You could come too, young Davis.”
Holden shook his head in exasperation. His father, Clifford and Derricks had gotten together monthly to drink for almost twenty years. Since his father had died, the visits had become infrequent and now he suspected that Derricks only came because he expected Holden to provide the brandy.
Holden directed him into the viewing room. Clifford hailed the commissioner and quickly set up a small plastic table and three chairs before pouring each of them a generous helping of liquor.
“Wha’ happen?” Clifford asked the commissioner a few minutes after they’d sipped from their glasses.
“The prime minister has me under a lot of pressure. A serial killer during my first month on the job?” Derricks’ slouched shoulders barely lifted when he sighed. “You’ve seen the dump sites; a cane ground is probably the worst place to look for evidence. To compound the situation, these girls didn’t go to the same schools or work at the same job. Hell, I’m not sure they ever met.”
Holden didn’t envy Derricks one bit. Police commissioners in any country had a daunting job, but it was no mean fun to be called incompetent before you cashed your first pay cheque.
“Are you sure it’s not a copycat killer?” Holden asked.
“That’s possible,” answered Derricks with some reluctance. “But the modus operandi is the same and we didn’t release how they were killed to the public. Dog-bite-it, the only reason I can talk about this is because you’ve both seen the bodies.” He downed the rest of his drink and refilled his glass. “They all had that cut on their necks.”
Holden’s hand paused in mid-air as he peered at the commissioner, racking his brain for details about the victims he had prepared for their funerals. He remembered the stitches in the shape of a ninety-degree angle on their necks.
“It’s true, both had their jugulars slashed,” Clifford said.
“All three,” corrected Derricks. “Paul collected the first girl so you wouldn’t know about her, but all of them had the same cut.”
Derricks sipped his drink and caught Holden’s eye. “This killer can’t get so lucky three times in a row, he’s obviously a doctor or someone who knows how to find the jugular in the first place.”
Holden wasn’t so sure. “And making L-shaped cuts? I studied anatomy and proper technique dictates that incisions be as straight as possible.”
Clifford agreed. “Only somebody sloppy or nervous would operate like that.” He tilted his chair until it balanced on its back legs. “Derricks, if I was you, I woulda get one of them psychics from overseas that does solve crimes to come and tell you who the killer is. Hire one of them white women with the shawls and bangles that does clink on them wrists like cowbells.”
Derricks glared at him, obviously mystified by Clifford’s nonsensical beliefs. “And let the PM get rid of me to make the cowbell psychic the commissioner?” He gulped the rest of his brandy and slammed the glass on the table. “I’m going back to Central. Have a good day.”
Clifford raised a shoulder and picked up the brandy bottle. “I thought it was a noteworthy suggestion.”
The two men sat in silence, mulling over what Derricks had said for a few minutes before Holden glanced at his watch. It was almost 6 p.m., well past the usual closing time. “Let’s lock up.”
Clifford stayed in the viewing room to put away the chairs and table, while Holden took the glasses to the lunchroom. To his annoyance, Holden found Eileen fast asleep for the second time since she’d been working there. How on earth could one person sleep so much at work, Holden wondered as he soaped the glasses. Through the kitchenette door, the phone rang. Holden kept washing, assuming Clifford would answer it, but by the fourth ring, it was clear that Clifford had already snuck out the back. “Knowing him, he probably ran off to draw up under Dorothy again,” Holden muttered as he rinsed his hands and ran into the office. But it was to no avail. By the time he snatched up the receiver, he only heard the drone of dial tone.
He was beyond irritated as he marched back to the kitchenette and shook Eileen awake. “I’m closing up,” he grumbled as she stretched and yawned.
It was times like these when Holden felt his already tenuous grasp on the business slipping. He often felt alone, adrift in a sea of responsibility that no-one else understood. Every day felt like a test of his patience and endurance, one with shifting goal-posts whose only constant was that time was always against him.
Holden stormed through the office, slamming windows and turning keys in locks so roughly that each click echoed through the building. When the phone rang again, Holden managed to answer it in time. His pulse raced as he crossed the office floor in two long lopes to stick his head through the door and say, “Let’s go. Collection in Bridgetown.”
At the crime scene, a constable diverted traffic over one of the city’s main bridges and directed Eileen to park behind a crowd gathered under a neon sign advertising Lucky Slots and Beer. The onlookers’ faces glowed as though powered by nuclear energy beneath the sign’s harsh artificial light. Holden peered through a gap in the crowd, trying to get a better glimpse of the scene unfolding on the dark street. Up ahead, two assistants from Paul’s parlour carried away the covered body of the elderly man who had collapsed and died of a heart attack.
A tinted black Camaro cruised past them and the driver honked the horn. Holden stewed silently in the passenger seat of Eileen’s car. Holden could just imagine the smug look on his brother’s face. It was the same look Paul had flashed him twenty years ago when he’d left two fat slugs in Holden’s school shoes. Holden had jammed his feet into the shoes, jumped off the top step and ran to the front gate before he felt something like warm jello oozing through his socks. He'd heard a roar of laughter and looked back to see Paul, tears rolling down his face as he slapped his thigh. Holden was lashed for not looking into his shoes before he put them on and destroying his socks. Paul was scolded for playing a trick on his brother. Holden had always been perplexed by how granular his own punishments were while Paul’s were wrought out of deference for patient child-rearing. Now, Holden seethed with anger the same way he had that day.
Eileen shifted the car into gear and said, “We’ll get the next one, don’t worry.”
Her statement didn’t placate him enough. “How can we when you’re always asleep?” he snapped. “We got here late because I had to wake you up again.”
“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I was tired.”
He’d never asked about her personal life, but one possibility of why she slept so often made him irrationally upset. Was she pregnant? She’d never mentioned a husband, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have one. Why wasn’t she like other assistants who complained about their bunions, diabetic mothers and lazy boyfriends?
“You’re tired all the time and it’s disrupting my work. Are you pregnant or something? And why won’t you tell me your last name?”
Eileen’s eyes narrowed as she folded her arms across her chest and stared at him with a tig
ht smile. “I sleep during the day because I’m afraid all the time and staying up at night is the only thing that comforts me while a serial killer is on the loose.”
Her thinly veiled sarcasm dripped with impatience. Holden squirmed in his seat.
“Every noise is a rapist coming to take the only thing the world says that I owe it. Or a thief coming to seize the few coppers in my possession because the truth is that you only pay me enough to make me a middle man between you and the bill collectors. The day you walk the road and have to clutch your purse and your private parts is the day you’ll stop asking me why I can’t sleep at night.”
Holden felt he should be upset that an employee spoke to him this way. Yet, he only felt embarrassed. Her words made him think of the first Slasher victim he’d collected: defensive wounds, angry bruises and a river of dried blood on her neck. Even in death, the young woman looked scared, her empty eyes frozen open when he’d arrived at the scene. Holden wanted to apologize to Eileen, but she turned up the radio so loudly that he’d have to shout for her to hear him. He could tell she was upset from the way she gripped the steering wheel and clenched her jaw as she drove.
She pulled into his driveway ten minutes later and stared through her window while she waited for him to get out. He lowered the radio’s volume and clasped his hands for a moment, mulling over how to phrase what was on his mind. “You know…I didn’t think about it like that. I’m sorry for not considering how the average woman feels in this situation. But…,” he paused and looked at her, “…I’m not heartless. Just because I didn’t understand doesn’t mean I can’t understand. If you have problems, you can tell me. I’ll help in any way I can.”
Her shoulders sank as though she'd had the fire sucked out of her. She glanced at Holden and said, “I’m sorry too. I’m tired, but I shouldn’t be so rude to you.” She shook her head self-consciously. “And I will try to talk to you more.”
He wanted to say something else but decided that they had made enough progress for the night. He simply tilted his head and replied, “Get home safely.” He climbed out, closed the door gently and watched Eileen drive to the other end of the semi-circular driveway and turn left to head home.
The night air was crisp and cool, but Holden’s mind was troubled. Eileen had been forthright about her fear, but not much else. He had asked about her last name twice. The first time she’d used humour to deflect his question. The second time she’d neatly glossed over it by discussing what she considered to be the crux of their conflict. Holden scratched his chin as he unlocked the door. There was no denying it: she was hiding something.
Chapter 5
Inside a Killer’s Mind
Dry grass, ripe ackees and the sight of tractors hauling cane to sugar factories were the hallmarks of a Barbadian June that gave the phrase ‘long summer days’ a whole new meaning. During rush hours, long caravans of vehicles would trail the bright red tractors on the two-lane highways, leaving the cars’ occupants with little else to do except chitchat on their extended journey. It was during these car rides that Eileen had grown accustomed to Holden’s good-natured grumbling, finding his observations both comical and profound. He was a deep thinker, capable of simultaneously invigorating her mind and making her laugh until she collapsed in tears. He appeared to relish amusing her and took to talking more than he did in the presence of other people. Her initial reservations about the job slipped away and soon her interactions with both Clifford and Holden improved.
On one particularly hot day, as they passed the scorched banks of the Constitution River on their left and Queen’s Park on their right, Holden grumbled, “Look at this ten-story eyesore. It breaks up the skyline like a concrete exclamation mark.”
Eileen grinned. The concrete exclamation mark Holden referred to was the new central bank. It was just around the corner from the funeral home and had been a topic of public contention for months since it would be Barbados’ tallest building once completed. It was hard to miss, visible even from parishes in the middle of the island like St. George and St. Thomas. Traditionalists felt it compromised the rustic appeal that lured visitors to the island. Progressives felt tourists wouldn’t come to an island lacking the necessary infrastructure to support a burgeoning economy.
Holden spent his life in a constant limbo of embracing the old and reluctantly fending off the new, which left him squarely on the outskirts of the debate — he didn’t mind progress, but took umbrage when it blocked his view.
“More and more, this place is reminding me of London. Big buildings, traffic…oh goodness, the traffic. I wish I had a private underground tunnel so I could drive anywhere I wanted.”
Eileen snickered, “I didn’t know you could drive.”
“I have a license. I simply choose not to drive.”
“How come?”
He exhaled deeply, his chest dropping like a sunken soufflé. “I had a bad accident two years ago. I was fine, but I was trapped in the car with my father’s body for hours until help came.”
Eileen bit her lip. She had assumed he was cheap or had some neurotic reason for being a businessman without a car. Now she felt horrible for prying. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Holden’s eyes glossed over for a moment, unseeing and distant as though the memories had taken shape before his eyes. “I think if he had struggled before he died, it would have been different. But being inside that car — calling out to him over and over as he grew cold — was excruciating.”
The thought of it made Eileen nauseous as she reversed her rusty blue Toyota Crown into the car park behind the washed-out funeral parlour. She wondered why she had bothered being nosy.
Eileen escaped to the lunchroom, hoping her embarrassment would cool off before she faced Holden again. The newspapers were open on the table, covered in Clifford’s biscuit crumbs. The police hadn’t made any breaks in the Cane Slasher case and for the most part, the murders had gradually sunk beneath the front pages. That day, one of the dailies ran a lengthy article on page nine headlined “Profile of a Killer”. As Eileen read the story in the muted brightness of the small kitchenette, goosebumps covered her arms as she realized with searing clarity that she had the wrong idea all along. The psychiatrist who penned the piece believed the culprit to be one man who had evaded capture for months because he was cunning and meticulous. The article noted that the women who vanished were between seventeen and twenty-three years old, which hinted that the Slasher had good social standing that would endear women. The isolated dump sites supported this theory because the killer probably had access to a car, a luxury available to less than a fifth of the population. The good doctor warned that a lapse in murders wasn’t indicative of the killer’s rehabilitation, but rather a sign that he was planning, waiting to slake his blood lust once more. She warned women to be extra vigilant in the coming months as the Slasher would surely strike again.
Eileen’s heart beat faster at the idea that the murderer was masquerading as every woman’s dream, flaunting attributes that would prove deadly if he got them alone. She had assumed it would be easy to spot a serial killer; now she wasn’t so sure.
Her mind flashed back to her childhood and the ominous warnings she’d heard when coming home late.
“Walk fast.”
“Avoid shortcuts.”
“Always tell somebody where you’re going and let them know when you get in.”
Her childhood had been a talisman against fear, and she’d had automatically rebelled against the advice. She’d found these redundant tips to be a double standard; none of the neighbourhood boys suffered through pre-outing lectures. All she got when she pointed out the unfairness were deep frowns and frustrated responses: “They’re boys, they don’t have to worry.”
Boys, Eileen remembered thinking bitterly. She didn’t see the difference. When Timothy Rudder had braked his bicycle suddenly with Eileen sitting on the handlebar, both of them had flown off and scraped their knees. Same blood, same pain. But different rules: Ti
mothy was petted and comforted with the standard, “Boys will be boys.” At Eileen’s house, she was told, “Stop — getting — mix — up — with — little — boy — things”, each word punctuated with a stinging lash across her legs.
But this killer who went around snuffing out the lives of young women was the first proper example Eileen had of why boys were different. Women lived in constant fear of being assaulted, robbed and murdered for no reason other than just existing. How do two sets of people, sharing the same planet, breathing the same air, get such different realities to navigate? She envied Holden’s habit of walking home late at night. There were times she was afraid to even run down the apartment stairs and jump behind the wheel of her car to leave home, far less walk through her poorly lit village.
The faint jingle of the telephone in the office snapped Eileen out of her thoughts. Death was calling again.
* * *
HOLDEN BUSTLED INTO THE LUNCHROOM ten minutes later, pulling on his jacket. “Eileen, we’re going to Shorey Lakes.”
“Who died?” she asked as she folded the newspaper.
“My mother’s cousin’s husband. Clifford left already.” Holden blew out an impatient breath. “What are you doing?”
“Just gimme a minute.” She dug around under the kitchen sink and emerged with the Baygon tin before she pushed her sunglasses on her face like a movie star. “Let’s go.”
“Eileen, it isn’t for me to bring up the delicate issue of stealing supplies, but why do you take insecticide with you every single time you leave?”
She tipped her sunglasses at him as they walked out the door. “Why is it a delicate issue? You’re the boss and if I’m stealing, I’m stealing.”
Holden grimaced as she opened the car’s hood. “Maybe upon our return we could have a little chat about impropriety.”
The Vanishing Girls Page 4